Why are we waiting 13 days, almost two weeks to go from the first round of the playoffs to the second round? It makes absolutely no sense. What I also don't understand is why Philadelphia/New England played the first playoff game then had to wait 11 days to play their second, first round game. The last match of game one, round one was Columbus/Atlanta, they played both game one and game two of the first round before Philadelphia/New England even played their second game of round one. The whole scheduling for these playoffs is just insane and makes no sense. MLS is dragging out these playoffs for no good reason.
The break between the first round and the second round is because November 13-21 is an international break on the FIFA calendar. The national teams are playing over that period so MLS doesn't want to have playoff games while those players are gone. The exact sheduling of the first round had three match windows. Games could be at any time in each window. The particular scheduling had to do with team's preferences, stadiums, and the broadcast networks schedules. Why exactly Philadelphia/New England wound up at the extreme ends of the first two windows was not announced, as far as I know. A Patriots home game in between was probably the reason. As far as the schedule for the first round you'll have to take that up with MLS and Apple. The belief is that many MLS teams wanted to have at least one home game in the playoffs and Apple wanted more playoff games to stream.
From what I have heard is that a majority of people (fans, players, coaches, teams) hated the three game first round and most likely we will see it go back to a one game first round next season.